The sky was ablaze. Every second, burning wreckage trailed black smoke as it plummeted toward the earth—a tragic defense line forged from the flesh and blood of human pilots. Though the fall of every fighter was accompanied by a precise countdown to death, it was this nearly frenzied, suicidal dogfight that stubbornly ground the Necron air force to a halt. Air superiority teetered on the brink, but that Sword of Damocles hanging overhead had not yet completely fallen.
This meant that before the last pilot turned to ash, the "ants" on the ground still had one final chance to struggle.
The massive defense works—constructed at an astronomical cost and dug deep into the planetary crust—finally proved their worth. Although the antimatter bomb that erased half the Hive City possessed terrifying power, most of the shockwaves were absorbed by thick rock strata and layers of composite armor. The deep-buried military depots remained unscathed, and within them lurked humanity's last fangs.
As Space Marines and the Helldivers surged from the subterranean depths like a tide, they were accompanied by a forest of steel that commanded the most attention.
They were cannons. Countless, endless rows of thick, long barrels, their muzzles held high, pointing straight at the firmament.
As far as the eye could see, nearly every inch of land was occupied by the Imperial Guard's iconic Basilisk self-propelled artillery. They weren't arranged in neat ranks; instead, they were crammed into every available crevice, some even perched directly atop piles of rubble. This wasn't a tactical formation; it was pure, frantic saturation.
Across the capital world of Amara, there were 13,000 self-propelled guns of various patterns—a number sufficient to give any logistics officer an immediate brain hemorrhage. At this moment, they were the pivot upon which human resistance against the Necrons turned.
Giving the Space Marines and Helldivers no time for sentiment, piercing firing orders were relayed instantly to every vehicle's fire-control terminal via data-link.
The target: the nearest black pyramid currently undergoing phase-deployment.
"FIRE!!!"
In the next instant, the earth of Amara felt as though it had been struck by a magnitude ten earthquake. Thirteen thousand Earthshaker cannons roared in unison, a sound like the heavens and earth splitting asunder.
Countless high-explosive shells converged into a literal wall of steel, screaming through the air as they slammed into the Necron positions kilometers away.
This was no longer a bombardment; it was an orbital strike launched from the ground.
That black pyramid, which had only just teleported onto the surface, didn't even have time to fully deploy its defensive shields before it was utterly submerged by the deluge of fire. The explosions linked together into a single sheet of flame, swallowing the alien architecture whole.
Necron Warriors stepping out of the portals had no time to raise their Gauss flayers before hundreds of large-caliber shells slapped them in the face simultaneously, instantly shredding them into a cloud of flying metal components.
Even the Necrons' proud living metal self-repair capabilities appeared pale and futile in the face of this continuous firepower—firepower enough to level mountains. No sooner had a leg been repaired than half a torso was blown away.
Humanity—a race the Necrons viewed as primitive "monkeys" in terms of technology—had, at this moment, relied on the simplest, most brutal kinetic gunpowder weaponry to seize a raw fire-superiority, pinning the once-insufferable Necrons to the ground!
Inside the pyramid, seated upon a throne suspended in mid-air, the Necron Overlord in charge of the ground purification mission watched this scene.
Within its glowing green ocular sensors, a flicker of unbelievable data fluctuated. It watched the humans pouring from the earth like a tide; it watched the overwhelming artillery fire. The script for the massacre it had prepared was completely derailed.
The moment its troops showed their heads, they were physically pulverized by tons of explosives. Meanwhile, its air force was still playing cat-and-mouse in the clouds, unable to provide support.
A dignified high-tier race, being bottled up at their own front door and blasted by a bunch of monkeys with only a few tens of thousands of years of history?
"Hmph, this primitive race is somewhat interesting..."
The Overlord gripped its staff, feeling a long-lost code of emotion labeled "indignant rage" running through its core.
Since the frontal fire was too fierce, it would strike from the place they least expected.
"Issue the command," the Overlord's cold voice echoed through the quantum network, "Deploy all Canoptek Scarabs, Wraiths, and Spyders."
Pointing toward that madly roaring steel battery, it passed a death sentence: "Attack from underground. Crush the foundations of these aliens' firepower! I want to see these primitive machines turned into scrap metal!"
However, the Overlord's "dimension-reducing" strike, which it believed to be flawless, failed to achieve anything.
What echoed from the depths of the earth was not the wailing of a collapsing human defense line, but rather the muffled, frantic sounds of explosions and slaughter.
The intricate networks of maintenance tunnels and air-raid shelters were already packed with human warriors. When the Wraiths used phase-shifting to pass through walls, hoping to harvest "fragile" flesh and blood, they were met by the roaring chainswords of Space Marines and Helldivers who had been waiting for them.
The Canoptek Scarab swarms, which should have been invincible in narrow terrain, encountered reckless human "ammunition-cleansing" of the area. The massive tunnel-boring Spyders had barely poked their heads out before being swarmed by mortal Helldivers covered in high explosives. These mortals cared nothing for their own lives; they used their bodies to jam the Spyders' mechanical legs, followed by a dull thud as flesh and metal vanished together.
Error reports of destroyed constructs flooded the data-link. One by one, expensive Canoptek Spyders were turned into scrap metal by this suicidal human "exchange ratio." The tactical intent to rapidly paralyze the human artillery from below was a total failure.
Standing at the entrance of the pyramid, the Necron Overlord looked at the human armored clusters advancing like a tide of steel. It watched the 13,000 cannons continuously spitting fury amidst the smoke, and for the first time, its proud high-level logic circuits suffered a severe lag.
This was illogical.
This was completely illogical!
According to warfare algorithms spanning eons, a lower race should fall into panic and chaos when faced with such a massive technological gap. But these creatures before it were like lunatics who had lost the ability to perceive fear.
Looking at the mortal army as dense as ants charging at the front, and the Space Marines behind them brandishing chainswords and power weapons, an utterly absurd—even shameful—thought popped into the Overlord's processor:
Could it be—that having just awakened and descended upon this planet for less than half an hour, it was about to be punched back home by a bunch of primitive monkeys who only knew how to use gunpowder?
Would a dignified Overlord of a Dynasty have to "read the loading bar" for resurrection in a stasis crypt because he was bludgeoned to death by a mob of primitives?
If such a thing truly happened, he would never be able to hold his head high in the aristocratic circles of the Necron Dynasties again! It would be an eternal stain etched into his living metal skeleton!
"No! That will never happen!"
The Necron Overlord let out a roar thick with metallic resonance, forcibly deleting the terrifying logical deduction.
Since long-range fire was suppressed and the subterranean raid had failed, then the battle would be settled in the oldest, most honorable fashion.
"Come then!"
The Overlord reached into the void and pulled out a long-handled greataxe shimmering with eerie green light—a Phase Axe, capable of easily slicing through the molecular bonds of any physical matter. Even the ceramite power armor of a Space Marine would be as soft as butter before it.
"Your ridiculous parabolic cannons cannot strike inside the pyramid!" The Overlord's voice boomed across the battlefield through amplifiers. "You want my head? Then come in and take it! I am right here, to utterly destroy the will of you vermin to resist!"